


Hey There Gautigamers

by thecaryatid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Felix Fraldarius being a skeptical asshole, Ghost Hunters, Humor, M/M, Making Out, Minor Annette Fantine Dominic/Mercedes von Martritz, Modern AU, Sylvain Gautier being a little shit, complete except for the epilogue, spookiness, stupid sex jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25827427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaryatid/pseuds/thecaryatid
Summary: “Why is Sylvain making videos?”“About that,”  Ingrid said, with an apologetic but guiltless smile, “I filmed him hitting on that haunted doll last night.” She slid Felix a $20 bill.“It seems the video went viral,” Dimitri said. “Sylvain is quite excited. He claims the two of you are going to start a ghost hunter channel.”Felix scoffed. “Like fuck we will.”
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91
Collections: Sylvix Big Bang





	1. Prologue

“Maybe it’s a secret door?” Sylvain’s tinny voice breaks through the darkness.

The camera stills, autofocus sliding from blurry to sharp, finally settling on a plain brick wall. 

“Moment of truth. Here goes!” 

Sylvain steps into the frame and shoves against the wall once, twice, three times, to no avail. “It probably opens inward, dumbass,” Felix’s voice rings harsh. 

Sylvain nods, presses his fingers into the narrow gaps between bricks and tugs - the wall opens with a shriek of rusted hinges. Beyond, darkness.

The handheld camera moves forward. It jolts as Felix crouches down to enter the dark hallway. He must not be carrying a flashlight; there’s nothing but the faint glimmer of reflected light off damp walls.

Sequences shot with only Felix are rare; he doesn’t narrate like Sylvain, or startle like Annette, or provide inappropriately lighthearted facts like Mercedes. Something, you know, is about to happen; there’s no dramatic music, but the length of this one silent shot speaks for itself. 

When it comes, Felix doesn’t notice immediately. But something at the end of the hallway, straight ahead, grabs your attention and won’t let go. 

Eyes, glinting red and malicious, hovering over the ground. 

The camera jolts. “What -” Felix doesn’t startle very often. “What the fuck?”

His footsteps slow. They become quieter on the ground as he moves from stomping carelessly down the hallway to approaching with an excess of caution. 

“It’s probably just another rat. A very large rat.” Felix’s breathing is loud and fast.

The eyes stay where they are as a screech rips through the air, shattering the tense silence into tenser fear. 

“Fuck -” the camera retreats back, awkward and jerky. There’s no warning before the glowing eyes surge forward, red and disembodied. 

“FUCK -” and Felix, for the first time in the history of the Gautigamer channel, turns and bolts. The camera lens drops toward the floor.

“Hey, something wrong?” Sylvain asks as the camera emerges into the light. 

“Saw something,” Felix replies, too quickly. “Probably just a trick of the light.” 

* * *

_ Three years ago _

It began, as so many things did, at a party. One of those parties that started with a loose group of a dozen friends and went until  _ late at night  _ turned into  _ early morning _ , into the hours where the too-strong drinks mixed a few hours ago had started to wear off, where bad decisions were made under the influence of  _ it’s 3 am and those four moscow mules are still making the world a little hazy _ .

So Annette asked, “Did I ever tell you guys about this weird doll my grandmother always said was possessed?” 

And Sylvain replied, “What, seriously? Like, possessed how? Do you still have it?” 

And Ingrid, because she was a horrible friend, got out her phone to record the latest bullshit. “Bets on whether Sylvain’s cause of death is ‘provokes possessed doll to murder him’?”

And Dimitri, because he was an even worse friend, was too busy sleeping sprawled out on the floor to talk anyone out of anything. 

“$20 that he hits on it,” Felix said, a line he’d forever remember as the turning point of his life.

Annette ran off and found the thing the thing tucked away in some box in the basement, and—because she was also a horrible, terrible friend who he would never forgive—set it gently in the middle of the trash-and-person-strewn living room. 

Mercedes, who apparently lived to sow discord, brought out her vintage tarot deck and spread it out in front of the doll. 

And Sylvain, because he was a short-sighted idiot that Felix was regrettably in love with, peeled Felix out of his lap and went to sit cross-legged in front of the creepy little thing. 

“Hey,” Sylvain said, grinning at the doll. “You’ve seen better days, huh.” The fabric was faded, the eyelids that were supposed to open and close in lifelike fashion were stuck in a permanent wink, the porcelain was smudged. “Still, I bet you’re a real beauty under all those years of wear.” 

And Felix, because he had no sense of self-preservation, drifted off to sleep on Annette’s overstuffed couch before he could hear the rest of Sylvain’s stupid monologue. 

He woke up some hours later, with too-bright morning light spilling into the room, illuminating the garbage covering the floor and the hungover people draped over every surface. 

“Hey Felix,” Sylvain said, stupidly chipper and somehow not hungover. Felix groaned and shoved his head under a convenient pillow; Sylvain snatched it away. 

“Feeelix, what’s that channel name you joked about?”

Felix glared up at Sylvain. “What.” 

“You know, way back at camp? The one you said I should put all of my,” he dropped his voice into a stupid, inaccurate impression of Felix’s sharp enunciation, “shitty gamer videos on.” 

Felix groaned and buried his face against the stained arm of the couch. “Fucking  _ Gautigamer _ . Why.”

No response. Felix peeked out just enough to see Sylvain grinning into his phone camera, starting a video, saying, “Hey there, Gautigamers! This is your hot new one-stop shop for all things spooky. Watch this space for all the death-defying ghost hunts and hot haunted tips you could dream of. Sylvain out!” 

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Felix gasped, Sylvain’s shitty smile and shittier video forcing him to drag himself off the couch and onto the floor and, finally standing up, stumble into the kitchen. 

Ingrid and Dimitri sat at the table, sipping coffee and carefully not focusing their eyes too much. 

“Why is Sylvain making videos?” 

“About that,” Ingrid said, with an apologetic but guiltless smile, “I filmed him hitting on that haunted doll last night.” She slid Felix a $20 bill.

“It seems the video went viral,” Dimitri said. “Sylvain is quite excited. He claims the two of you are going to start a ghost hunter channel.” 

Felix scoffed. “Like fuck we will.” 


	2. Ghost Hunters

Sylvain stuck his hands in his pockets and appraised the house, casting a discerning eye over the crumbling brickwork and the sagging ceiling. 

At least Felix assumed that’s what he was doing, since he’d been standing motionless in the front hall of their latest location for ten minutes, lost in deep thoughts. 

“Well?” Felix finally interrupted. 

“Right! Yeah, I've got a vision for this one, Felix. Some good establishing shots of that crumbling fireplace - nothing too dark, just a _little_ bit creepy. A quick walkthrough of the first floor, starting with the former billiard room. Then some POV shots up the stairs, and into the haunted bedroom to make contact with the ghost.”

Sylvain directed the setup with the authority of a manager born and bred, and with the actual technical know-how of an enthusiastic amateur. It was fine - his instincts for lighting and framing were adequate, and Felix the _actual_ tech-and-video person adjusted his errors. 

“This one’s gonna be so good. You can imagine the new episode, right?” Sylvain grinned up at the warped and yellowed ceiling. “It drops, all our fans are looking at it like ‘hey, that doesn’t look exciting at all’, but then Mercedes starts her voiceover and we edit in a couple clips of Annette screaming at shadows and you hugging her, you know, really play up your soft side,” he spun around, exuberant, grabbed Felix and kissed his forehead.

Felix’s scowl didn’t budge. “You seem cheerful about all this one.” 

“I thought I’d try optimism. It’s a good look on me, right?” Sylvain winked and pulled Felix closer. 

Technically it was. Technically everything was a good look on Sylvain, so Felix wrapped his arms around Sylvain’s shoulders and didn’t argue. “You’re determined to put me in as many shots as possible. I should feel exploited.” It’s a luxury, the ability to joke like that, granted by years of slowly assuring each other that neither of them are actually a means to an end. 

Sylvain just hugs him tighter. “I mean, our cut of the profits does go into a shared account, so who’s exploiting who, kitten?” 

“You found me out. I’m only here for your ghosthunting riches.” 

“I’m so betrayed.” Sylvain worked his fingers through Felix’s hair. “Like, _so_ wounded. And here I thought you loved my cutting wit and charming smile.” 

The pause that follows was loaded with some stupid joke Sylvain seemed on the verge of making. He always got this look when he was calculating just what to say to catapult Felix directly into the amount of annoyance that he insisted was _cute_. 

So, “No,” Felix said, before Sylvain could say anything else.

“Really? You don’t want to hear my incredibly clever moneymaking idea?” 

“Nope,” Felix said again. Sylvain was going to tell him anyway.

“Because, see, we’re both super hot, right,” Sylvain smiled smug and blinding. “Obviously our get-rich-quick scheme would be porn.” 

“Sylvain, no.” Felix ducked out from the hug and dodged when Sylvain grabbed for his wrist. 

“Okay, so, modified get rich quick plan, we get Annette to film some of our makeout action and accidentally post _that_ to the channel.” Sylvain was completely unbothered at Felix’s annoyance. It was _annoying,_ but weirdly reassuring. Sylvain made another grab at Felix; Felix made sure he missed. 

“Is that the only thing you ever think about?” It wasn’t the first time Sylvain had joked about it. They both had inheritances and the riches of millions of youtube views; it wasn’t like they needed the money.

Sylvain laughed, high and bright. “I’m always thinking about _you_. The sextape potential is just one very small aspect of my constant focus on how fucking cute you are.” 

This time Felix allowed Sylvain’s grab to connect and didn’t resist as Sylvain walked them back against a crumbling wall. He dragged Sylvain down for a kiss, savored being pressed between unyielding brick and Sylvain’s warmth, and drank down every delighted sound escaping Sylvain’s throat. 

Sylvain lazily palmed at Felix’s ass and not-so-lazily hiked one of his legs up until Felix gave in to letting himself be picked up, his legs locked around Sylvain’s waist. “Pretty bold for a guy who was just saying he doesn’t want to make a sex tape,” Sylvain whispered between moans, inappropraitely low and breathy. 

“The cameras aren’t on yet, asshole,” Felix bit at his lower lip in retaliation, grinned wider than he meant to at Sylvain’s desperate moan.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” Sylvain gasped out, abruptly tossing out all his typical artistry and pressing Felix into the wall. Felix said a quiet prayer of thanks to his leather jacket, the only thing standing between him and getting terribly scratched up by the uneven brick at his back. 

“How long until Mercedes and Annette are supposed to get here?” Felix asked, looking down at Sylvain for once. He looked unreasonably wrecked considering they were just making out like teenagers, eyes wide and hair disheveled, lips parted, every breath gasping out into a whine. 

“I _really_ don’t care,” Sylvain said, strained.

“You’re so impatient.” As though Felix wasn’t also thinking of dragging Sylvain into a dark, cobwebbed corner. The last of Felix’s resolve fell as he knotted his hand into Sylvain’s hair, guiding him up to kiss along Felix’s jawline. “But I wouldn’t be opposed to finding somewhere more private.” 

“Oh thank god, I’m a minute away from exploding.” Desperation leaked through the low, seductive tone he was making every attempt to keep. 

The front door slammed open. “Sorry we’re late! We got held up at—” Annette’s cheerful greeting turned into a disgusted yelp. “Guys, again? Can you at least _try_ to get a room?”

“Shit,” Felix said.

“Shit,” Sylvain echoed. 

Mercedes’ gentle laugh cut through the awkwardness.

Sylvain swallowed and turned to the other half of the Gautigamer team. “Hey guys, so delighted you could make it, do you think you could wait outside for, like, ten minutes?”

“Only ten minutes?” Mercedes said, “That’s awfully short, Sylvain. It’s not very fair to Felix.” Her tone was mild, as if pointing out the weather, but her eyes were full of laughter. 

Annette elbowed her. “Don’t encourage them! We’re already behind schedule!” She glared at Sylvain, jabbing her pointer finger at him. “Stop mucking up the schedule with your inability to keep it in your pants!”

“That’s actually a lot to ask, considering how much time we spend around each other? Like, just statistically speaking.” Sylvain adjusted his grip on Felix, ever shameless.

Annette threw up her hands and turned her attention to the easier target. “Felix! Get down from there!” 

Felix sighed. He let Sylvain’s hair slip out of his fingers and set himself back on solid ground, trying to exude some amount of professionalism. The effect was immediately ruined when Sylvain slung an arm around his shoulder and kissed his forehead. 

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all friends and professionals here, we’re totally ready to get to it.” Sylvain winked at Annette while blatantly lying. “Let’s start by going through the game plan.” 

Annette’s sigh was exaggerated, loud, long-suffering. “Well, at least two of us are. Go ahead, what’s the game plan?” She pulled a little notepad out of her pocket. “It’s not like we haven’t done this a thousand times now,” she added under her breath.

Mercedes snorted.

Sylvain took it in stride. “I am, as always, the magnetically charming ghost-hunting host, leader of Channel Gautigamer, an intrepid adventurer into things unknown, here to investigate the paranormal and make hilarious jokes about everything.” he made an over-exaggerated bow and everyone snickered. No one present thought highly of Sylvain’s hilarious jokes. 

He forged on despite the gentle mockery. “Tonight, we’re looking for the ghost of a child. Apparently it, like, shows up and makes creepy wailing sounds and plays with toys that people leave as offerings in its bedroom. You know, standard creepy bullshit. I heard the noises this one makes are _really_ hideous, though.”

Felix scoffed as loudly as he could. 

“And?” Mercedes prompted.

Sylvain took a moment to sigh, communicating exactly what he thought about all this doubt. “So we use the daylight to get some nice establishing shots and take a look around, and then tonight we hang out in the place that’s most haunted and see if anything spooky happens. Like, come on, Mercie. This is all really basic.”

“Very good! You remembered perfectly.” Mercedes said, in her best patronizing teacher voice. Felix wondered if she was actually going to pull out little gold star stickers. “And what about the ghost?” 

“Supposedly this ghost is the vengeful spirit of a murdered child, so we’ll put out some toys and hope for the best. Any objections?” Sylvain said.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Felix objected, practically according to script.

“Don’t you think that’s a rude thing to say while you’re looking for ghosts?” Mercedes replied, just as predictably, with a serene smile. 

Felix couldn’t think of a straight answer to that. Ghosts weren’t real, and they were ghost hunters. It didn’t add up. Mercedes seemed to offer everything supernatural the benefit of the doubt, and _she_ might believe that ghosts were real and, actually, it all made Felix’s head hurt.

“You think the ghost is real,” he accused.

Mercedes always wriggled out of any direct answer about her belief or lack thereof. She did tarot readings; she did astrology; she did ghost hunting, and approached it all with the same undefinable calm. “Oh, I just think that it’s rude to accuse someone of not being real when you don’t know for certain,” she said. 

Felix rolled his eyes, buying time to find a response. Every argument he thought of tangled into incoherence. The silence stretched on, Annette giggled, and finally Sylvain elbowed him in the ribs, cutting the argument off. 

Felix elbowed him back and went to check on the cameras; the only remaining response. Annette’s laughter only grew louder. 

* * *

The shoot proper began after the lazy beams of sunlight were extinguished by covering dark. Felix awoke from his late-afternoon nap curled against Sylvain’s side to the tickle of Annette doodling on his arm. 

Felix shoved her away and shoved his sleeve back down. “Time,” Felix said, tugging Sylvain’s hair until he jerked awake.

“Fuck. Already?” Sylvain groaned, squinting into the darkening room. 

“Already.” The hours before dark always passed in a flash of hurried setup and fitful naps, preparing their gear and themselves for a long night of wandering the halls and catching fragmented sleep.

Felix sat up and surveyed the room. Annette paced in front of the fireplace; Mercedes sat comfortable and cross-legged by the window, cards spread in front of her. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve been talking to the spirits.” Felix could not deal with Mercedes’ usual spooky bullshit so soon after waking up. 

“Oh, I didn’t contact anything,” Mercedes said. “I just did a reading on our success tonight. Would you like to hear the results?” 

Her smile was so unassuming, at odds with the hesitant wide berth that Annette gave the cards, Sylvain’s mildly intrigued noise, and Felix’s own scathing eyeroll. 

“You’re going to tell me even if I say no,” Felix said. 

“Wow, rude.” Sylvain smirked and stretched, starting the slow process of unfolding all of his limbs and standing up inch by difficult inch. His joints cracked like five times on the way there. One of these days Felix was going to make him start doing yoga or something. 

“Mercedes worked hard on that reading, Felix.” Annette paused her pacing for just long enough to fix a steady glare at him. 

Felix glared right back. “Judging by your palpable anxiety, I think I’ll pass.”

“I think you should listen!”

“Fine. Did they say we’ll talk to a ghost?” Felix said, tone flat.

“Oh, no!” Mercedes said. “It’s much scarier than that.” She looked down at the cards again, delicately touching the one in the center. Annette flinched.

Felix still wasn’t impressed. “And what could _possibly_ be scarier than a ghost.” He finally followed Sylvain in standing up. His own knees popped a couple times. Damn. Maybe they both needed to stretch more.

“A demon, of course,” Mercedes said with no apparent humor or fear. 

Annette gasped. “Mercie, that’s not what you said earlier!” She actually pressed one hand to her mouth in shock, eyes round, trepidation written in every line from the tip of her bangs to the hem of her skirt. So she was probably going to spend all evening hiding from every shadow.

Sylvain barked out a wry laugh. “Cool, always wanted to meet one of those,” He rummaged through a box for his trademark shitty many-pocketed vest. “Hey Felix, you packed my vest, right?” 

“It’s in the crate with the spirit box,” Felix said, not looking away from Mercedes' eerily-serene smile. “A demon. Really. Did you make this up.” 

He eyed the cards with a complete lack of trust, faith, or belief. They were pretty enough, little rectangles of cardstock with bright, intricate patterns, bold enough that he can make out distinct designs upside down and from a few paces away—a devil, a moon, and something with three… were those swords? Whatever.

“The cards never lie, Felix. They’re a true window into fate,” Mercedes said, smoothing out one of the card’s crumpled corners. 

“Just let me get a few shots of them.” This tarot thing? Total bullshit, just like the ghost thing, and the holy water thing, and the demon thing. But it was bullshit that people couldn’t seem to get enough of; it’s bullshit that kept him and Sylvain from leaning on their inheritances, letting them get that distance from the constant shadow of their families. 

Felix grabbed his favorite camera, flipped through his automatic check of color balance and lighting until the cards showed up dark and vivid in the dim light. “Rearrange them so the devil’s in the middle.” Apparently they were going with the demon angle tonight; they might as well play it up.

“No,” Mercedes replied. “This is how I drew them, and this is how they’ll stay.”

“Fine,” Felix griped. He zoomed in on the grotesque red face of the devil, getting a good crisp shot of its horns under Mercedes’ pastel-pink fingernails. Perfect. “Fucking demons.” 

Felix kept scowling over at Mercedes and her cards as he grabbed his own equipment: infrared camera and spirit box and too many fiddly little contraptions that Sylvain insisted on, all held in a stupid utility belt with way too many straps and pouches that Sylvain also insisted on. It was, not to belabour the point, an incredibly stupid look.

But at least it was better than Sylvain’s, who’d finally found his trademark vest. It was a disaster in tan canvas, designed with the dual goals of carrying dozens of ghost-hunting gadgets and making everyone in its vicinity take 2d4 psychic damage. Maybe it was some sort of protection against whatever demons Sylvain may or may not believe in, warding them off with the sheer force of its tacky presence. 

Felix squinted at it again as Sylvain started loading up all the little pouches, infrared thermometer in one, EVP recorder in the next, a whole row devoted to different varieties of pocket sized cameras, two tape recorders, his mic pack, and exactly three packets of peanut butter crackers. He struck a pose once he finished, knee bent and hand on his hip like some intrepid explorer instead of a guy about to take a bunch of footage of an empty basement. The general ridiculousness was only surpassed by how, even with the shitty vest and the stupid messy hair and the exoskeleton of scientifically-dubious tech, Felix still sort of wanted to make out with him. 

But Felix’s questionable taste, and Sylvain’s purposefully terrible taste, were not the point. The point was the shadows deeper in the building, so he double-checked the stationary camera placements one last time before picking up a camcorder.

Annette handed the flashlights out along with extra batteries; those things always seemed to die just when you were squeezing through a cramped crawlspace, not that Felix would ever admit he’d nearly pissed himself the one time it happened to him.

Ten minutes later it was impossible to delay any longer, not that Felix wanted to delay. Not that Mercedes’ cheerful proclamation that they were fated to talk to a _demon_ bothered him in any way whatsoever; he was just being thorough. 

“So what’s the holdup?” Sylvain asked while Felix triple-checked the cameras.

Felix glared his most poisonous glare at Sylvain, surely enough to make him recoil at point-blank range. “I’m checking your fucking equipment.” 

Sylvain wasn’t affected at all. Disappointing. And Felix realized his phrasing mistake half a second after it left his mouth, right as Sylvain smirked with a horrendously predictable “You can check _that_ out whenever you want.”

“The cameras are rolling,” Felix snapped, like it had any chance of shutting him up. 

“Oh, good. Hey Annette, could you mark that timestamp down as a keeper?” Sylvain’s grin was calculated in its smugness, but genuine amusement glittered at the corners of his eyes. 

“Fuck you.” Felix ignored Sylvain’s stupid pretty smile and finished his triple-check of their equipment. No more delaying; no more excuses keeping him from walking downstairs into—literally nothing worrying. An empty basement, home to shadows and spiders and mice and absolutely nothing to be scared of. 

“Ohhh, he’s almost smiling!” Annette chirped, taking a few snapshots of his less-severe-than-usual scowl. 

“Lovely,” Mercedes said. “Did you know that demons are drawn to negative energy? It might leave you alone if you stay cheerful!”

“This is a conspiracy against me,” Felix muttered as Sylvain led the way up the narrow steps. 

“Whaaaat? Nah, I’d never agree to a conspiracy against _you_.”

“Wouldn’t you.”

The corridor at the top of the staircase was cramped; Sylvain’s arm pressed against Felix’s as he shrugged. “No way. Mercedes is just like that, you know?” 

_Like that_ , a vague and unhelpful term for her general penchant for serenity in the face of literally everything combined with her love for the macabre and mysterious, her unflinching warnings about demons and ghosts and misfortune given in apparent sincerity. 

“Don’t get me wrong, it is pretty funny. You’re never this jumpy, it’s adorable.” 

“I am not adorable,” Felix said out of long reflex. “Do you believe in any of this demon bullshit?”

In all years doing this whole ghost hunter song and dance Sylvain had yet to nail down his own belief or lack thereof in the supernatural, shrugging and wriggling out of every pointed interview question, telling his fans to chase their dreams and believe in their truth. Usually Felix didn’t push it. 

“What, really? You’re asking me this right now?” 

“I am,” Felix said, folding his arms,, deadly serious.”What better time than the present.” 

Sylvain brushed up against Felix in the too-cramped space, doing his stupid nervous stretching until his elbow bumped into the wall. “Dunno. Don’t you think the whole concept of an afterlife is a big, vague thing to ask for a yes or no on? I mean, half the time I can’t even decide if I want to top. Do you really want me to take a stand on whether ghosts exist?” 

“Three years of this and you’re still undecided?”

“Guess so,” Sylvain said, wrapping an arm—in comfort?—around Felix’s waist, pressing them snug enough together to walk side-by-side into the dark. “Don’t get me wrong, I think most of the stuff we investigate is bullshit, but I’m open to the possibility in a general sense. Maybe there are restless souls, you know?”

Not a satisfying answer, but probably an earnest one. Felix grunted. 

“What about demons?” Felix tried not to read shifting shapes in the empty air.

Sylvain squeezed him tighter. “Is that really worrying you?” 

Felix didn’t respond. He frowned against the echoing memory of _a demon, of course!_ Sylvain stopped, turned awkwardly to face him, and pulled him into a proper hug. Going limp and lax in Sylvain’s arms was second nature, tension fading out into warm belonging. 

Sylvain kept talking. “Honestly? I’d be way more likely to believe in demons than in ghosts in like, a general sense. We’re not gonna find them here, though.” 

“You were raised too superstitious.” Felix awkwardly hugged Sylvain back with the flashlight clutched in one hand and a camera cradled in the other. 

The contented sigh against his cheek is worth it as Sylvain nuzzles closer before finally pulling away, brushing his lips over the tip of Felix’s nose and stepping back with a smile that’s still blinding in the dim half-light. 

“Well, let’s go find more nothing,” Sylvain said.

* * *

It really was more nothing. Nothing interesting, nothing exciting, nothing the tiniest bit spooky or creepy or supernatural. Felix even stopped feeling the urge to flinch away from strange shadows. 

Annette and Mercedes finished their sweep of the upper floor and made their way to the “haunted” bedroom, the only one with boarded-up windows. Meanwhile, Felix and Sylvain tried to coax the supposed ghost out, tempting it with a small rubber ball, a secondhand teddy bear, and, when that didn't work, Sylvain’s precious peanut-butter crackers.. Annette darted from person to person, too nervous to stand still or be alone or just, like, chill. And never quite nervous enough to stop offering unasked-for criticism. 

“Didn’t they tell kids not to talk to strangers back in the 1850s?” Annette asked from her current spot hiding behind Felix. “You’re just going to scare them. And these toys are boring!” 

“You try, then.” Felix shoved the bear into her hands. “You’re child-sized.” 

“Really?” Annette stomped across to the other side of the room, willing to risk death by ghost as long as she didn’t have to stand by Felix. “I can’t believe you’re so scared that you can’t come up with any good insults.”

Mercedes chuckled. Point to Annette.

Sylvain stepped into the center of the room, retrieving the teddy bear from Annette. “Excuse me? Ghost?” There was no response. “Mercie? Do we know its name? Calling it ‘ghost’ is probably mean.” 

“We do not! There aren’t any records of who the ghost is supposed to be, only of apparitions. But perhaps naming it would help it remember its life!” Mercedes said. 

“What.” Felix said. “You want us to just pick a name?”

“Oh, I think that would be entirely appropriate.” Mercedes looked as serious as ever. So, not serious at all, but to Felix’s eye, quite sincere. 

“Casper?” Sylvain suggested. 

“We can’t name the ghost Casper! It’ll think we’re making fun of it.” Annette said. 

“Supposedly it died long before movies existed,” Felix said. Was he really defending this stupid plan? “It wouldn’t catch on.” 

“If it’s here, it may have heard us discussing it!” Mercedes said unhelpfully. 

Felix stared into the little island of light in the center of the ghost’s supposed former bedroom. He decided he didn’t care. “Here, Casper. We brought gifts for you,” he said. 

The room remained undisturbed. 

“We should probably turn off the lights. Ghosts prefer the dark, right?” Sylvain said. 

Fuck if Felix knew or cared. He shrugged. Annette shrank back from the center of the ghost room, returning to her spot between Felix and Mercedes. Mercedes nodded in approval. 

They flicked off their flashlights all at once. Felix’s eyes were still adjusting to the new depth of the dark when Sylvain started speaking. 

“Casper,” he said, incredibly serious. “We came here to speak to you. We bring our regrets that your life was cut so terribly short. We offer presents, and we also offer the chance for you to tell your own story. We’ll be here all night, waiting for you to appear.” He fell silent, waiting for the ghost. 

Felix closed his eyes; better that than straining to see movement in the dark. No answering voice spoke. 

“What does this ghost even do?” he asked, opening his eyes to glare blindly at the shadows six inches from his face. 

Mercedes answered. “Oh, the usual. There’s a very famous case where it locked someone in the boiler room!”

The typical bullshit. “Is that all?” 

“Not at all! Supposedly it drove the previous owners quite mad. Strange dreams, horrifying visions, shifting furniture - all the symptoms of a haunting.” 

It sounded, as it so often did, like carbon monoxide poisoning. “Did someone check the carbon monoxide levels?” 

“Right now they’re fine,” Annette piped up, her face glowing from the light of her monitor. “There was never a real investigation, so we don’t know about before.” 

“Sounds like a pretty angry ghost,” Sylvain said, like he was happy about it. 

“The dominant theory is that it’s actually a demon!” Mercedes reminded them. 

“Again with the demons. Always with the demons.” Felix was done with demons. 

Next to him, he felt Annette straighten up and take a deep breath to scold him, but she was cut off by a sudden beep. They all fell silent.

“The motion detector?” Sylvain whispered, and Felix nodded. Annette let out the tiniest of squeaks. Only Mercedes was silent.

The motion detector beeped again. Despite himself Felix waited for vengeful screeching, for the ice of spectral claws clutching at his heart. But nothing moved; nothing attacked; nothing screamed, and he opened his eyes into mundane darkness. 

“Those motion sensors are always miscalibrated.” They’d been triggered by breezes and dust before, no sense looking for a supernatural explanation when a normal one would do. 

Felix shrugged and turned his flashlight back on, shining light on their pile of offerings. The ball had rolled two inches to the left, and one pack of crackers was gone.

Mercedes hummed, unconvinced. “Shall we try that basement, then?”

* * *

One dark, poorly-maintained building from a century or two ago was pretty much like any other. Felix had seen a lot of them, slept in a lot of them, spent hours wandering through basements glaring at moldering old wallpaper. This house was literally just more of the same. The ball and missing crackers after they “talked” to the “ghost” were nothing new; even Mercedes’ delightedly-grim predictions were nothing new. But every time Felix closed his eyes he heard _oh, no, it’s something far scarier than that!_ and saw Sylvain’s smile, regretful and unreasuring, in the dark. 

He was not _scared_ , but the shadows were dark and the unpredictable rhythm of the house settling, floorboards creaking and pipes clanking went from unnoticed background noise to an unignorable clamor. _They were nothing but normal sounds_ , he told himself firmly. Ghosts lived in the realm of unreality, not in the all-too-real mildewing basement where he was squeezed into a cramped sleeping bag with Sylvain. Fully clothed, watched by the unblinking eye of one more camera, and surrounded by their own set of ghost hunting gadgets with enough blinking lights and distractions to keep anyone from sleep. At least Felix could take off his utility belt and Sylvain, thank fuck, took off his stupid vest. 

Felix fiddled with the tablet connected to the various camera feeds. Sylvain watched over his shoulder and acted like an obnoxious asshole. 

“We can leave the light on if you’re that afraid of a little ghost getting you,” Sylvain said as Felix fast-forwarded through their footage of the haunted bedroom for the fifth time. 

“You know I can’t sleep with the light on.” Felix jabbed the pause button with more force than it deserved and rolled over to glare directly at Sylvain. 

“Oh? I guess you’re just risking a ghostly kidnapping,” Sylvain said, grinning from half an inch away. 

“Idiot. I’ll feed it to you and run away.” 

“You can’t do that if I keep you here with me.” Sylvain wrapped his arms around Felix’s waist like a particularly cuddly octopus, tangling them together. 

They finally drifted off cuddled up, even though Felix was definitely going to have uncomfortable impressions from the seams of his clothes branded into his skin in a few hours. It was fine. He was used to it. 

He _wasn’t_ used to actually being woken up by the beeping of a motion sensor. Felix elbowed Sylvain until he made a grumpy little _hrrrnngh_ sound and opened his eyes. Felix patted the floor beside them awkwardly until he found his tablet.

There was nothing on the video feed at this precise moment, but Felix rewound a couple minutes, watching for movement. Their stuff had been set off by mice a few times. It was probably a mouse. 

Sylvain stayed uncharacteristically quiet. The screen did not show a mouse. The ball they’d left out to tempt the ghost rolled slowly from its place near the edge of the wall over to the motion sensor, going all the way across the room and bumping into the base. 

Felix paused it. “That could be anything. There was probably a draft.” 

“Maybe,” Sylvain said. “Keep playing it.”

Felix’s imagination must have been playing tricks on him, because he was pretty sure that he saw something move at the edge of the screen, just beyond the range of the night vision camera. And then

“Those are definitely eyes,” Sylvain said.

Two glowing dots of light, out in the shadows. Fine. They could be eyes. “It’s probably a rat.” Disgusting, but still normal.

“That would have to be a fucking enormous rat,” Sylvain said, hooking his chin over Felix’s shoulder to stare at the, fine, eyes. 

They were nearly a foot off the ground, definitely not high enough to belong to a child, unless it was crawling. And human eyes didn’t reflect light that well, not that ghosts would have any reason to follow basic rules like that, and _oh god why was he thinking about this_.

“Looks like we caught a ghost,” Sylvain singsonged into his ear. 

They did not catch a ghost. What the fuck were they supposed to do about it? Their gameplans were a little short on what to do in the event that they actually encountered paranormal activity. Annette and Sylvain and Mercedes were the real stars here, not any ghosts. 

Felix checked the current video feed—nothing, just the ball still resting at the foot of the motion sensor. There were a couple other blips earlier, but nothing noteworthy. 

It was—Felix checked his watch, because it always paid to have an old analog watch—just after 3:30.

“Half past three, huh? You know that’s when ghosts are most active, right?”

Felix glared.

Sylvain backed off with an exaggerated shrug. “I mean, supposedly, you know? It’s all over the spooky podcasts. It’s the hour for ghosts and demons.” 

“That sounds incredibly fake,” Felix said. 

“The viewers will love it though. So, we gonna stay up and see if anything else happens? Do some investigating? Take another crack at making contact?”

Only three hours until dawn. Going back to sleep didn’t feel worth it. “Sure.”

They didn’t, as Sylvain initially suggested, get up to do investigating. Felix was still sitting up in the sleeping bag, flipping aimlessly between camera feeds, warm and comfortable and leaning back against Sylvain.

Felix switched back to the original feed. Movement: a shift of shadows in the distance, likely to be missed entirely if it weren’t, once again, for the glowing eyes. 

“Fuck,” Felix said. 

“I guess we really have to go out there,” Sylvain said, absolutely delighted. “Come on! We’ve got a ghost to hunt.” 

Felix loaded up his utility belt, strapping it on along with his gloves and his jacket. Sylvain slipped back into his incredibly unfortunate vest. Felix sighed and powered up his favorite camcorder.

They opened the door, stepped into the main room of the basement. There was nothing but shadows and darkness and silence. Plenty of questionable-but-structurally-sound walls, rotting wallpaper, a bit of black mold on the ceiling; all terrifying in their own way, but no ghosts. 

Their quick sweep of the basement and first floor didn’t turn up anything. Felix was going to drag Sylvain back to their room when there was this _noise_. A scream, technically, but calling it a scream didn’t do justice to the directionless, unholy screeching that surrounded them in one sharp, rising note. 

Felix did not consider himself a coward. He’d faced all of the world’s mundane monsters, from broken down cars to insurance agencies to his own feelings. He froze anyway, staring into the dark, breath as quick as his thudding heart. 

“Uh,” Sylvain gulped audibly behind him. “What the hell was that?”

Felix didn’t answer. He counted three more breaths before nodding to himself. No mysterious haunted noise in some decaying old house was going to dissuade him; it was probably a raccoon outside the building, or the screech of the ancient heating system. Ghosts were fake. They didn’t exist, they’d never existed, and if they did exist they certainly wouldn’t be hanging around a decrepit basement making bad horror movie sound effects. 

Satisfied, talked back into rational bravery, Felix took another step into the dark. “Nothing.” Felix forced himself to speak at a normal volume. “Just the pipes creaking or something.” 

Sylvain leaned against the doorframe, either unaffected or pretending. “You think so? When did you hear creaking pipes that sound like the screams of a soul trapped between life and death?” 

“Fine. It could be raccoons fighting outside.” 

“Nope. It came,” Sylvain dropped his voice to a low, dramatic whisper, “from _inside the house_.” 

“No it didn’t. How would you know that?” 

Sylvain held up a gadget and grinned. “Face the facts! It came from somewhere inside.” 

_Facts_. Fact one: ghosts still weren’t real. Fact two—“That’s the fucking thermometer, Sylvain.”

“Ah, oops.” Sylvain put it away, and pulled out his infrasound sensor, pointing it deeper into the basement. 

Fact fucking three: the infrasound sensor blinked, detecting something at the far end of the basement, by the boiler room. Something Felix and Sylvain couldn’t even hear.

“It’s pointing to the boiler room. That means it’s the pipes,” Felix said. “We can pinpoint the source of the noise.” 

“That’s pretty brave after how you were quivering when you heard that thing,” Sylvain said. “It’s a ghost! It’ll eat your soul.” 

Felix considered retorting that ghosts didn’t traditionally eat souls. But the much simpler fact that ghosts and demons weren’t real would make it pointless. “Oh, shut up,” he said instead, sticking with tried and tested simplicity. 

Sylvain, as usual, did not shut up. “Annette’s probably freaking out. Think we should check on her?” 

Felix shrugged. “She’s with Mercedes.”

Sylvain blinked at him. “So we should double check on her? Between the noise and the ghost stories she’s never going to sleep again.” 

Annette and Mercedes’ room was off the short hallway on the other side of the basement. The walk there was typically ghostless and uneventful. Felix knocked and opened the door. 

There was a muffled shriek; Annette stared in wide-eyed horror at the door, hand pressed over her mouth. “Felix! You startled me!” She crossed her arms and glared. “You should know better!”

Mercedes didn’t get up from her seat against the far wall. “That was an odd noise, don’t you agree?” 

That was… certainly one word for it. “Odd. Right. What,” Felix closed his eyes, couldn’t believe he was about to ask their resident spiritual expert and possible actual-believer-in-ghosts this, “do you think it was?” 

“Oh, I would imagine it was the demon! It’s what we’re here to find, after all.” 

Felix stared at the wall, deader inside than their quarry. _What exactly are the details of your belief in ghosts?_ He thought. _Do you really think they’re real? Or are you just fucking with me? Have you been fucking with me for the past several years._ Either seemed equally plausible.

“The demon. Of course.” He turned to Annette. “Well? Theories?” 

Ever ready to be unhelpful, Sylvain draped an arm over Felix. He’d strapped a camera to his chest, tilted up to keep his face in frame at the most unflattering possible angle. “Felix here thinks it was the pipes.” 

Annette shook her head. “Those weren’t any pipes _I’ve_ ever heard,” she said. “And we’ve heard a _lot_ of pipes.”

But had any of them really considered the pipes theory? A bit of shrieking wasn’t out of the question. 

“His backup theory,” Sylvain poked Felix’s cheek, presumably to piss him off, “is raccoons fighting outside.” 

Annette’s frown deepened. “Raccoons? Those weren’t raccoons, and it definitely sounded like it came from inside.” 

“That’s exactly what I said! Come on, we have three votes for ‘not raccoons or pipes’ and two votes for ‘probably a ghost’. Let’s go find the ghost!” His grin was bright and shit-eating, and Felix questioned the rationality of everyone in the room. 

Mercedes got to her feet. “Well? What are we waiting for? There’s a ghost to find!” She sounded pleased. Actually pleased. 

Annette’s miserable little sigh was the perfect counterpoint to Mercedes' enthusiasm. “If there’s really something out there, it’s probably better to locate it than stay cornered in here.” Ever determined to face things with an unwarranted amount of determination, she bounced up on the balls of her feet, flourishing her EMF reader. 

“Now, ladies,” Sylvain said. Everyone groaned. “Let’s choose our plan of attack. Divide and conquer or stay as a group?” 

“Divide, of course,” said Mercedes, and “We’re going together, obviously,” said Felix. 

Sylvain, grinned his annoying grin and wrapped his arm around Felix’s shoulders, tugging him out of the room. Annette’s indignant squawk echoed behind them. Felix grumbled, but as always he leaned into Sylvain’s shoulder.

For the benefit of the camera, Sylvain started talking, describing the dark hallway and the noises. “Okay gautigamers of all genders, we are hunting for a ghost. You know me, ghost hunter extraordinaire.” 

Felix scoffed. 

“Supported as always by Felix, my adoring partner in spookiness.” He poked Felix’s cheek again. “Say _hi,_ Felix.” 

“...hi.” Felix said, for the benefit of Sylvain's whole regrettable career. 

“We heard the most unholy demonic shrieking just a few minutes ago, like someone having their entrails yanked out—”

“Gross,” Felix interrupted, inflectionless. “It was probably just old pipes.” 

“And which my lovely, incredible partner insists was nothing, always the adorable skeptic.” 

“I am not adorable.” 

“So here I am, bringing you the scoop on all things haunted, risking life and limb and soul, forging out into this really creepy old basement, searching for the source of the noise.” Sylvain stopped in the middle of the hallway, holding out his hand to halt Felix as well. It was unnecessary. The hallway was empty, the dramatic swivel Sylvain made showed the camera nothing but mildewing walls, Felix’s scowl, and more empty shadows. 

“The ghost is evading us,” Sylvain stage whispered. “Supposedly this one’s really vicious, but it seems almost shy. Maybe we’ll get lucky and hear it again.”

Technically that seemed likely, since noises such as creaking pipes happened several times in a given night. They were common, normal, perfectly expected, and it would mean nothing but poor construction and outdated infrastructure if it happened again. 

Because the world hated Felix, and because Sylvain always had the devil’s own luck, and because somewhere behind them Mercedes was probably gently encouraging the alleged demon to appear and scare the life out of everyone, it did happen again. 

It was a _shriek_ that reached through every barrier of denial and jabbed straight into Felix’s heart, kicking it into frenzied pounding. He’d never minded scary things, not gory movies or horror games, but the howl reverberated off the walls and into his lungs, his eardrums, the hollows of his skull until it ended with one final, warbling wail.

“Aaand there we go,” Sylvain said softly. “Can’t wait to hear what _that_ sounds like on the recording. Chilling, right? Even Felix here is a little shaken.” 

Felix found his voice again. “Liar.”

“Right, right, just me teasing,” Sylvain said as he tucked a reassuring arm around Felix’s waist. “You know Felix, cold as stone in the face of a disembodied demonic voice. Besides, he’s totally armed. Vials of holy water and everything. I bet he’s planning to knife fight the ghost.” 

Ridiculous. Felix was not about to admit he did have both holy water and a knife tucked into his belt. They weren’t needed; fine, that was a bit loud for creaky old pipes, but ghosts still weren’t real. 

“Well! Nowhere to go but forward, right?” Sylvain’s grin flashed bright in the darkness.

Felix narrowed his eyes. “You know something you aren’t telling me.” 

“What? Noooo.” Sylvain kissed Felix’s temple, jostling the camera. Felix made a mental note to have that taken out before it’s edited to that one fan’s playlist of _times Felix was openly affectionate_ “I might have a tiny suspicion, but that’s it, I swear.” 

“What’s your suspicion?” 

“Nah, it’s probably wrong. Besides, it’s so cute seeing you jumpy like this, right?” Sylvain turned to face him entirely and dragged him into a hug. Felix slumped forward with his forehead tucked into Sylvain’s neck. It was tempting to protest that he _wasn’t jumpy_ , but his grip on Sylvain’s arm spoke louder than any possible words. Sylvain already knew, and no one else was here to see him. 

Besides their three million subscribers, that is. Felix mentally marked this as another scene to edit out and throw away. That playlist haunted him.

“I will admit,” he said after a long pause, “that didn’t sound like pipes.” 

Sylvain laughed, but at least he didn’t bother to make fun of Felix as they continued deeper into the basement, clearing each room as they worked their way to the boiler room. 

The sound didn’t stop. Every time it was more prolonged, more desperate, more horrifyingly hellish, like nothing that could come from the throat of a human living or dead. And when the reached the cramped boiler room, with its oddly-placed brick wall and jumble of pipes, Felix couldn’t find anything that would cause such a noise. 

“That isn’t a person,” Felix said with utter certainty after the third time he’d jumped, clutched at Sylvain for security, tried to deny his reflexive fear. “Nothing human could sound like that.” 

“I dunno, there are some really talented voice actors out there, I bet one of them could do something like that.” Sylvain frowned at the brick wall like a puzzle, as though it was out of one of the stupid adventure games he unaccountably liked. Those streams always started out big and bled viewers fast, as they turned into nothing more than Sylvain methodically working his way through puzzles, cracking jokes fast at first and then staying silent longer and longer as new challenges caught his attention. 

“It’s a wall.” Felix rolled his eyes. “What, do you think it’s hiding something from you?” 

“It’s definitely hiding something from me,” Sylvain said, voice odd and serious. 

The wall remained normal brick in the dark that Felix’s eyes had long since adjusted to. “Flashlight,” he said automatically, pulling his out and directing it at the bricks. Light played over an unnatural, uneven line in the brick and mortar. It could be a door. It could be a gap in the wall that was awkwardly bricked up years ago, decades ago. Neither thought is particularly reassuring. 

“Pretty sure it’s a door.” Sylvain took the flashlight from Felix - even though he had his own perfectly good flashlight tucked into his belt - and angled it until the light caught on metal hinges hidden by the brickwork. “Definitely a door. That’s weird… didn’t notice this at all when we did our walkthrough earlier.”

“It’s easier to see the irregularity when you have one strong light source. The shadows are sharper,” Felix said, with much more confidence than actual knowledge.

Sylvain brushed his hand over the brickwork, wiping away decades of dust and grime and then grimacing at the dirt left clinging to his palm. “Well? I bet this is it. Ghost central.”

Felix kicked at the wall. “It’s probably a storage space. Why would it be haunted?” 

Sylvain rested his hand on Felix’s shoulder. It was still disgusting and grimy; Felix shrugged it off. “Who ever heard of a hidden room that _wasn’t_ haunted?”

“How many secret hidden rooms have you heard of, period? They aren’t exactly common.” 

Sylvain laughed that stupid, sexy, joyful laugh. “Felix. Love of my life, light of my soul. We’re ghost hunters. There have been _so_ many secret rooms.” 

Technically incorrect. There had not been that many hidden rooms. Plenty of dark, creepy hallways, and rooms that had at one point been hidden before being unearthed by startled redecorators. “Fine. But none of them were hidden by the time we got there.” 

“Hmm, true. Well? Makes this one pretty special, right? I want to be extra thorough about recording our very first real hidden room discovery. Go get Mercedes and Annette. They really should be here for this.” 

Sylvain looked too gleeful as Felix headed out to find their other partners in spookiness. As he left, because the universe really _hated_ Felix, a wail rose and crested, echoing along brick and stone and damp, directly over him, setting shudders down his spine and stitches in his breath. The direction was clear this time—it came from directly behind him, from the other side of the hidden door. Felix turned to look, staring at Sylvain framed against the door, a deeper shadow in the dark of the night. 

The Sylvain-shaped shadow gave a thumbs up. Irritating. Felix could only imagine the shit-eating grin Sylvain was wearing, either at the supposed “ghost” or at whatever “suspicion” he’d developed and refused to share. So Felix flipped Sylvain off for good measure before walking away.

Mercedes and Annette were upstairs, hovering around the edges of the haunted bedroom. He found them by following the whispered trail of _ohmygodghostsarentrealohmygod_. Apparently Annette was not having a great time. 

“Any new theories?” He glared at Mercedes and patted Annette’s shoulder in awkward comfort. She was quaking in her practical shoes, despite her repeated chant that _ghosts aren’t real_. “Ghosts still aren’t real,” he snapped before Mercedes could answer.

“Oh, well, I suppose that means you don’t care to hear my theory.” She beamed at them both. “It could very well be a ghost.”

“Nope, nope, no ghost, it isn’t a ghost,” Annette said, shaking her head wildly. “There! Are absolutely no! Ghosts! Here! Or anywhere!”

“Doesn’t that seem terribly confident of you?” Mercedes tapped her chin with a single finger. “Who is to say what becomes of the soul?” 

“I don’t believe in souls,” Felix said. Souls? Really? Who had time for that sort of introspection? 

Mercedes shrugged. “Well, if it is a ghost, I suspect that it’s trying to get us to leave! If we stay longer it could decide to seek vengeance.”

Felix ignored that. Ghosts weren’t real, but his and Sylvain’s rent was. They needed to finish this shoot. “We think we found the source of the noise. It’s coming from beyond some bricked-up door.” Which was not a secret passage or hidden room built for nefarious purposes; old doorways got bricked up for all sorts of reasons. This one probably opened onto an even older heating system. 

“Oh, and you want me to go there? To the source of the possible ghost, spectre, or demon?” Annette said, enunciating the final words with accusation. 

“Correct.” 

Annette sighed. “Why do I agree to these things?”

“We pay you, the audience loves you, and when you’re not in a creepy old basement you’re adamant that ghosts aren’t real.” The teasing could wait until they’re out of the supposedly-haunted house, sitting around a table at a some mediocre restaurant chain and ready to reexamine everything in the light of day.

Assuming, of course, that they weren’t all brutally murdered by a ghost first. 

“Ladies,” Sylvain said, like a skeevy asshole, as they met him by the hidden door. Felix gently kicked his shin. “Ow. And Felix, who’s going to murder me on camera if the ghost doesn’t take care of it first.” 

“Shut up.” Felix frowned as severely as he could and then broke at Sylvain’s puppydog eyes, stepped in and leaned against his side for a long moment. “If a ghost kills me, give all of my stuff to Annette.” 

“None for me? Really? Fine, fine, I’ll carry out your dying wish. How about if a ghost kills you _and_ Annette?” 

“It’ll have to go to Ingrid.”

Sylvain whistled low and loud. “Wow, that’s so harsh. I can’t believe you’re so mean to me.” 

“Whatever.” Felix rolled his eyes. “Are we going to go in or not?” 

“Yeah, it looks like it’s that time. Well? Who’s first?” Sylvain said. 

“Not me.” Annette said immediately. 

“I think I’ll stay here and keep Annie company,” Mercedes said. 

Sylvain nudged Felix’s side. “Looks like it’s up to us. Are you leading, or am I?”

“I’ll go alone.” Ghosts weren’t real; Felix didn’t need a companion other than the camera he carried. That and his will and his absolute lack of belief in ghosts is enough. 

“Brave,” Sylvain said, raising an eyebrow. “You taking the holy water with you or leaving it?” 

Felix reached into his utility belt and pulled out both the vial of holy water and the knife he was toying with the idea of using it on. “I don’t need these.” 

“What, really? Well, if a ghost eats you, try to drop the camera so it’s facing toward it.” 

“Asshole.” Felix nearly reached up to kiss Sylvain’s cheek, until he remembered the camera aimed at it and the _times Felix was openly affectionate playlist_. 

Sylvain grinned. “Moment of truth. Here goes!” Sylvain shoved against the wall once, twice, three times. 

“It probably opens inwards,” Felix said, rolling his eyes. 

Sylvain nodded, pressed his fingers into the narrow gaps between bricks and tugged - the wall opened with a shriek of rusted hinges. Inside… was a hallway. A dark hallway, exactly what Felix expected. 

He nodded to Sylvain, to Mercedes, to Annette. He stared at the wallpaper illuminated by Annette’s flashlight, even more molded and rotted than it was in the rest of the house. The few square inches that weren’t obscured by age and damp showed some repeating symbol he didn’t recognize. And Felix steadied his camera and stepped into the hidden room. 

Which turned out to be more of a hidden hallway. Or perhaps a tunnel; maybe there was an exit somewhere on the grounds. It was almost cool; they could milk it for drama in the edit. 

He kept his flashlight off. He always preferred to rely on his excellent night vision. Something skittered off to the side—a mouse? Felix kicked in its general direction. 

Far down the hallway, there was some sort of shadow - perhaps it was finally coming to an end, terminating in a wall rather than continuing to some far-away door into the outside world. Something was odd about it, though, and at first Felix wasn't sure what he was seeing. Two points of light in the dark, reflecting from somewhere, too steady to be caused only by the blinking _record_ light on the camera he’s holding carefully in front of him. He raised the camera higher and closer to his chest, half to get a better look at the thing, half as though it was capable of protecting him. 

The points of light kept glowing, red and bright. They couldn’t be eyes, right? They couldn't be eyes, it didn’t make sense for them to be eyes, but in the sinking pit of his stomach he knew he was fooling himself. 

Glowing, floating eyes. Great. Someone probably installed glow-in-the-dark lights or something in here long ago for a prank—nothing more than that. 

Felix took a long, steadying breath and restarted the walk he hadn’t realized he’d stopped. His breath echoed loud in his ears, louder than it should; it only made him more annoyed, how uneven his breathing was, responding in pointless fear toward imagined ghouls. It was just a light; it was fine. If he freaked out here Sylvain would never let him hear the end of it, and if the camera caught him panicking the internet as a whole would never let him hear the end of it. 

But the worst happens, the one thing that could break his composure, the one thing he’d been telling himself _wouldn’t_ occur since he noticed the lights motionless at the end of the hall. 

They moved. 

He’d always assumed that ghosts, if such things exist, would have subtlety. They’d move in the corner of your vision, shift small objects just enough that you question if they’d moved at all. This thing, whatever it was, never learned that school of thought—the eyes, or whatever body mortal or spectral they were attached to, surged forward. Right at him. 

Felix nearly dropped the camera as he stumbled back, hand outstretched as though he could ward off vengeance from beyond the grave just with a vague gesture. Predictably, it had no effect. They chased him. 

And, with a curse and a grimace and dread half for the thing that followed and half for whatever smug reaction Sylvain was going to have, Felix ran. 

He barrelled headfirst into Sylvain as he stepped back into the light, ignoring startled gasps and questions and clinging onto Sylvain’s arms—strong and broad and muscular—for a frenzied breath as he twisted around, watching the door for any sign of the thing that chased him. 

“Hey, something wrong?” Sylvain asked, stupid and gentle, rubbing Felix’s back like he needed to be soothed. 

“Saw something. Just a trick of the light.” 

“Yeah? You sure? Come on. Tell me about it.” Sylvain didn’t stop enveloping him in strong arms and warm hands and a low, soft voice that tried its best to soothe all the fear away. 

Slowly Felix turned around, facing the door he so ignominiously ran through. It was a door; just a door. No eyes, no movement, no ungodly shrieking rang from within, and next to him Annette and Mercedes peer at him in—concern? Probably concern. 

He imagined it. He _must_ have imagined it; ghosts weren’t real. 

“I imagined it. There were eyes, in the dark. Just my imagination.” 

“Oh, well, there’s a perfectly easy way to check,” Mercedes said, still so above it all. “You were filming the whole thing, weren’t you?” 

The camera was gripped tightly in his hand. He’d never turned the recording off, he realized with a rush of disgruntlement - the fodder for the next episode will include a lot of shaky shots of the floor and tinny audio of his panic. Disgusting. He stabbed at the stop button and shoves it toward Mercedes. “Look all you want. You won’t find anything.” 

Mercedes hummed in approval as she flipped the tiny screen out and started fast-forwarding through the footage. 

Felix tilted his head back to glare at Sylvain, who’s moved to cupping his elbows, more natural than words, more goddamn irritating than glowing eyes in the dark. “Why the fuck do you look so happy?” 

Sylvain’s smiling. It wasn’t the stupid fake smile, Felix could tell the difference. He looked like he was having _fun_. 

“Oh,” Sylvain kissed his cheek, “you’ll figure it out pretty soon. Try not to yell at me too much when you do, okay?” 

Just for that, he was going to be extra pissed off about whatever it is. “No promises.” 

“Seems fair, yeah.” Sylvain slumped down to the floor and pulled Felix with him, settling him between Sylvain’s legs, cozy and contained. “You okay?” 

“Just peachy. I love spending my nights harassed by inexplicable screams and then chased by figments of my own imagination. What could possibly be better.” 

“We’ll all laugh about this soon enough, right?” 

Seemed unlikely given how _annoyed_ Felix was over literally everything about this, but he pictured a shitty chain restaurant and heaping plates of oversalted food, too-sweet desserts and Sylvain filling a plastic cup with twelve types of soda just to watch Felix grimace. They’d laugh about it soon, wouldn’t they? And just like that the adrenaline faded from his bloodstream, tense-coiled muscles relaxed, he let out a quiet sigh. 

Still. There was the matter of the eyes, the noise, the—whatever it was. 

“Any progress?” Sylvain called over to their friends. They’d been huddled together in some hurried conference for a minute or two now, staring at the camera and gesturing as their hushed voices flavored the air.

“Good news! Or bad news. Good-bad news?” Annette fidgeted with the camera. 

“How can it be good _and_ bad,” Felix said.

“Well! Uh,” She gave a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “The good part of the good news! You weren’t imagining things.” 

Felix stared. There was actually something there? It wasn’t his stupid mind frantically making things up in the dark, or his stupid eyes looking for light that wasn’t there. Huh. 

“So the bad news is…” 

Annette was practically vibrating with anxiety. “The bad news is… there’s something there!” 

Right. He’d extrapolated that one already. Fuck. “Fuck,” Felix said, since what else exactly was he supposed to say. Fuck, right? “What does it look like?” 

“Oh, it’s nothing special,” Mercedes said, waving her hand dismissively. “I can see two spots of light in this video, just before you turned to run. They don’t _seem_ to be attached to anything, but I can’t be sure.”

“So in your professional opinion, is it a ghost?” Felix hated himself a little as he asked. Ghosts weren’t real. Mercedes wasn’t a ghost professional because ghosts weren’t a thing. 

“Oh, Felix, do you want _my_ opinion now?” Mercedes paused, as though considering the question carefully. “Well, in my professional opinion, it’s a demon.” 

Felix scoffed and craned his head back, glaring up at Sylvain. “You’re keeping something from me.” 

“Aww babe, why would I be doing that?” Sylvain said, but the glee at the edges of his stupid smile didn’t make it convincing. 

“Because you like making me look like an idiot.” Or at least Sylvain liked catching Felix’s moments of uncertainty on camera. 

“Guess I can’t deny that.” Sylvain replied. Felix doesn’t have to look up to know the exact smile he was wearing, quiet and fond despite everything. “You’ll forgive me, right?” 

“Possibly. Eventually.” So this was some trick, some puzzle that Sylvain had figured out the answer to. Maybe Annette as well. And Mercedes? Well, who knew what Mercedes knew. She played her metaphorical cards close to her chest, unlike the tarot cards she was ready to brandish at everyone who crossed her path. 

Regardless of whatever Sylvain knew, regardless of any bullshit demons, they were ghost hunters. They came here looking for footage, and they would see it through. 

Felix snatched his holy water and knife back from Sylvain. He had tools at his disposal; he’d use them. He flexed his hands until they steadied; holding his breath, he poured a few drops of the precious holy water over the blade of the knife. 

Sylvain grinned, grabbed Felix’s own camera back from Mercedes, flicked it into action and levelled it at him. “Felix Fraldarius, noted disbeliever in ghosts, just coated his utility knife in holy water. Care to make a statement about that?” 

The camera lens reflected his own frowning face, pale and tight. Felix sighed out his tension, flexed his hands until they stopped trembling, and stared up into the camera’s eye. 

“Caution is a virtue. A knife will cut through living flesh; now it will also do for the dead.” If dead things were real. If holy water wasn’t bullshit. 

This time they entered the hallway as a group. Annette clutched Mercedes’ hand and bit at her lower lip; she nodded to Felix, tiny and determined, as they prepared to step from the basement to the pitch-dark hallway. 

Instinctively, Felix reached for his flashlight. But no, the point was to encourage this hypothetical ghost, coax it out, grant it the darkness and silence it needed to manifest. He reached for the handle of his newly-blessed knife instead, right hand ready to draw it, and raised his camera. 

They stepped inside; shadow swallowed them. 

Initially, there was no sign of the thing that had charged out at him. The hallway was tranquil except for Sylvain’s quiet narration, a constant flow of observations that washed over Felix. 

“Nothing so far,” Sylvain said, whispering into his camera. “This wallpaper’s interesting, though. Some sort of repeated symbol. I don’t recognize it, but it looks occult.”

The hallway was wider than Felix had realized during his first trip down here. Broad enough for them to walk two abreast with room to spare on either side, and he turned his head to study the wallpaper as well during their slow procession. It was an odd symbol, strokes of looping tendrils almost like wings. They’d have to look it up later. 

And that was all there was - a dark hallway, some strange old wallpaper, Mercedes’ dire prediction and Felix’s overactive imagination and some cruel trick of the light captured by the camera. 

But Sylvain stopped walking. “Jackpot,” he said, louder than the rest of his commentary. And all unwilling, Felix turned toward the end of the hallway, facing his memory of eyes in the dark. 

And the eyes stared back at him. 

Felix froze. He inhaled once, and twice, and three times until his hands did not shake, until the camera he leveled directly at the eyes stayed steady and sturdy as the foundation beneath them. He tapped his thumb against the knife, debating between the dangers of drawing it and charging the thing—risking a nasty slip in the dark—and staying defenseless before it. 

Caution won. Felix released his grip on the knife and grabbed Sylvain’s hand instead, gripping hard enough to feel the outline of bones beneath muscle and skin. Sylvain squeezed back, gentle where Felix was bruising. 

“Why don’t you go say hi to your ghost?” Sylvain said. 

“What,” Felix whispered, staring into gleaming red eyes like the force of his gaze could keep them at bay. 

“You are in its house,” Mercedes said. “Greeting it would only be appropriate, don’t you think?” 

“Mercedes!” Annette hissed. “We shouldn’t approach it!” 

“Isn’t it a bit late for that? At this point, we should at least be polite.” 

Felix gulped. The damp air blanketed him in suffocating layers, thick enough to cut, too thin to be a barrier between him and the ghost. But beside him Sylvain stood unmoved, unafraid, holding Felix’s hand as loose and unconcerned as if they were walking along the beach. 

The thing _howled_ , even more hideous from only feet away. Felix stumbled backward, ducking behind Sylvain, his determined camerawork finally giving out. He clutched Sylvain’s chest until the scream echoed into silence, until Annette’s answering yelp of fear was absorbed in the heavy air. 

“Seriously,” Sylvain said, “you should introduce yourself.” 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Felix said, still hugging Sylvain from behind. 

“Come on. Trust me,” Sylvain peeled Felix’s hands away from his chest and tugged him forward again, toward the unmoving eyes, toward the source of the noise. “You know I wouldn’t actually let a demon eat your soul.” 

Unfortunately, the first thing that brought to mind was demons. But something else tickled at the back of his mind, almost hidden among quick memories from every horror movie he’d ever seen. Glowing eyes, quick movement, an ungodly screech—there was something familiar about all that, something _mundane_. 

Felix breathed in air and breathed out fear. He dropped Sylvain’s hand. 

He turned on his flashlight. 

Glowing eyes—check. Terrifying claws—check. A scream that ripped apart souls—check. Felix stared into the eyes of the thing that had terrorized him all evening, driven him through the hallways with endless haunting screams. He stared at the fucking _cat_. 

“Yep,” Sylvain said as Felix’s silence stretched. “Pretty terrifying ghost, right?”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for the epilogue, coming to an ao3 near you this September. 
> 
> The gorgeous illustration is by [loreleimelodei](https://twitter.com/loreleimelodei), who was a great partner for this whole project!
> 
> Wow well first of all, thanks to my amazing beta Masha, savior of my pacing, prose, and Annette voice. Also thanks to all the sylvix big bang people who held my hand as I panicked over not being able to write humor. 
> 
> This fic's sort of a spiritual sequel to [when summer's gone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25644550/chapters/62254723), Ethereally's fic for the sylvix big bang! It's great, you should go check it out if you want more Sylvix shenanigans, but a few years earlier and a whole lot cringier.


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